


adapt

by mellarosa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, background astoria/draco, ginny/harry - Freeform, it can tho, no actual romance sorry, pansy and draco are friends, pansy doesnt make new friends in this fic she makes allies, pansy parkinson deserves more character, slytherin doesnt always suck, smidgy smidge smidge of blaise/luna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 00:38:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8689786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mellarosa/pseuds/mellarosa
Summary: We know this. We know Pansy Parkinson is placed in Slytherin House in Harry's year. We know she is cruel. We know she is a bully. We know she simpers at Draco Malfoy's side. We know she wears a frilly pink dress to the Yule Ball. We know she joins Umbridge and doesn't speak out against the Death Eater teachers during her seventh year. We know she likes unicorns but tries to hide it. We know she tries to give Harry to Voldemort at the very end. We know she does not marry Draco. Pansy Parkinson is a Slytherin. Slytherins adapt.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is a fucking mess it needs so much editing oh god so much editing i mean i wrote this in a fucking memo app on my phone while baking cookies but i have school tomorrow (...today technically) and i need to go to bed I JUST WANTED TO GIVE PANSY SOME CHARACTER WHAT THE HELL IS THIS

People tend to forget Pansy Parkinson is a Slytherin. 

Oh, they remember she was in Slytherin. But they forget that the Hat always chooses correctly. 

Being pureblood has never been a deciding factor for where the Sorting Hat places you. There have been many, so many purebloods not in Slytherin. (Even the purebloods who hold on to that sense of superiority.)

Being cruel and sharp does not make one a Slytherin. (How many Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs and even Gryffindors have been vitriolic to Harry Potter over his years at Hogwarts?)

Even ascribing to the teachings of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named do not make one a Slytherin. (Barty Crouch Jr was brilliant, and clever, yes, but oh was he loyal, so loyal, loyal above all else.)

Pansy is more than her cruelty, her acid words. They are an integral part of her - you cannot remove her cold gemstone-sharp edges without destroying what makes her Pansy - but she contains more than that within her. 

The day after the Battle of Hogwarts, Pansy cuts off her hair. 

Not all of it. Pansy is vain. But the world is a different place now. 

("Come here, Pansy," her mother scolds in a hazy memory. "Bring your brush. Your hair is a mess. You ought to keep it neat, it's such lovely hair. You can use that.")

The world is a different place, and Pansy needs to adapt. So she cuts her hair, her long, dark, lustrous hair, inches and inches shorn till it brushes her chin. In another act of defiance, she slices off locks till thick black bangs nearly hide pale hard eyes. 

("Draco, do you think I'm pretty?" a young Pansy asks in a syrupy voice, leaning her head on the boy's shoulder. He makes a distracted noise, frowning intently at his book. "You, uh, have nice ... eyes," he hums absentmindedly. Pansy pouts. He doesn't notice.)

Slytherins are cunning. Ambitious. They do what they must to get where they want. 

Pansy has known what she wanted since she was a first-year in Hogwarts. She wants to walk down halls and the streets, seen because of her stride and her fashion and her reputation. She wants power without responsibility. She wants the triumph that comes when someone flinches or stutters in the face of her unrelenting viciousness. 

She still wants that. 

Before He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named fell before the fury and loss of the young boy the Dark Lord made his nemesis in his own folly, before the Wizarding World began to slowly turn from older ways, before Hermione Granger strode into the Ministry with brash stubbornness, before Susan Bones took her aunt's place to bring about equality, before a whole host of young children grew up into adults that would have nightmares of a war fought because of blood purity.... It was easy to get what Pansy wanted. 

(Pansy slips on pretty, delicate shoes and steps neatly into the footprints left behind by her mother, left behind by so many of the adults she grew up around. She finds the right crowd, sends smiles and simpers and flattery and the occasional bribe, she mocks the people she's supposed to. And she believes it all.)

(She wears a pretty, light, lacy pink dress that swirls in layers around her plain figure and makes her feel like she can fly. She puts her hand on Draco's proffered arm and knows she'll have what she wants.)

But then Harry Potter stands in the Great Hall victorious and the world changes and Pansy raises her wand and shears off her hair. 

-

A pale woman, almost ethereal in dove white robes against the dove white snow, luminescent blue eyes and pink cheeks the only color standing out on the porcelain figure, stops Pansy in Diagon Alley. 

Pansy realizes with a start that it's Luna Lovegood. The child has grown into a woman, albeit just as strange an adult as a kid. "What do you want, Loony," Pansy asks, voice colder than the winter chill, when Luna does nothing for a few moments other than stand in Pansy's way, watching her with eyes that should have been cornflower blue - if cornflower blue made you think of stars and caverns. 

Luna cocks her head. "I don't understand," she says lightly. "I mean, I understand why you took off the pink dress. But I don't understand why you chose razors instead. Surely that makes things harder."

Unnerved, Pansy returns Luna's stare. Startled not because of the odd words, but because they make sense. Luna smiles vaguely and gestures to Pansy's short robes, high boots, and glare. 

"You'd think so," Pansy sighs, finding herself relaxing in the way she does only around Draco these days. When someone sees the truth anyway you might as well show it. "You'd think soft sweaters and a smile would make it easier. But people don't trust a Slytherin. They forget that Shacklebolt was Slytherin. They just remember green and silver under He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and they shy away."

"If they won't trust you," Luna hums, "give them a reason to."

"Do you want to get a drink?" Pansy blurts out, startling herself a little. This is adapting, she supposes, because Luna Lovegood was a war hero, and if she's going to live in this world she's going to need connections, but this is... Loony. 

But Loony is staring at her with cornflower galaxies and Pansy is cold and what the hell, she's already stopped talking to her parents and gotten an swear-to-god working class job. (The horror - a Parkinson in retail? But Pansy finds she almost enjoys the independence of it. The ability to shape her own path. Well, she'd enjoy it if she didn't despise people. But simpering and conniving are her talents and even harsh as she looks these days, she's still good at it.) 

So Pansy and Luna walk into the pub and order the exact same ridiculously sugary drink. 

-

Draco starts dating Astoria. For some reason, this pisses Pansy off. She stalks out of his house practically trailing fire, leaving behind her oldest friend sitting quietly at the coffee table. 

(Draco and Pansy are friends. Aristotle claims that friendships born of mutual needs and history are still valid and worthy friendships. Pansy will never read Aristotle, but she would agree.)

Pansy rants to Luna at one of their regular meetings at the pub, viciousness and hatred falling from painted lips, anger at Draco, but also at herself, because it isn't as if she needs Draco, Pansy doesn't require anyone to complete herself-

"True," Luna interrupts, smiling, "you are yourself. But Draco can't just change clothes like you, Pansy. He has to adapt differently. You're orange because you feel like he's weak."

"Orange?"

"You know," the blonde shrugs, "angry, blinded. When you feel all wobbly and when you close your eyes it's orange. But we can't all be as strong as you, Pansy. Draco is hurting and Astoria grounds him. You're independent. He can't be, not yet. You're orange because you're mad he's weak."

Pansy blinks. She's never thought of herself as strong. (It's a different kind of strong, she decides later. Not strong like Gryffindor bravery, all last stands and crashing bravery and pushing past tears. But strong enough to weather anything and still get up afterwards. Strong enough to throw away a pretty pink dress and paint black around her eyes to make cold ice grey glint sharper.) 

Pansy doesn't apologize to Draco. She just walks into his house, interrupting Blaise and Draco's conversation, and demands a smoke.

-

Luna doesn't tell Ginny that Pansy is coming. Luna doesn't tell Pansy that Ginny is coming. 

After they've been booted out of the pub, Luna nods wisely at a passerby who stares dumbfounded at the harsh debate nearing a duel still continuing outside of the bar. (Luna knows what she's doing.) 

"You tried to fucking sell out Harry to Voldemort!" Ginny screams. 

"You're damn straight I did," Pansy hisses. "And I'd do it again."

Ginny grasps her wand. "Coward!"

"I'm not a fucking Gryffindor!" yells Pansy. "Stop acting like bravery is the only virtue that matters!"

"Oh, and shrewdness is a virtue?"

"Tell me," Pansy wrinkles her nose (the nose Harry Potter called pug-like, and he wasn't wrong, but Rita Skeeter wasn't wrong either when she called Pansy vivacious), "tell me, if the Dark Lord had called not for Potter, but for Blaise Zabini. Give him Blaise, and there would be no deaths of innocent children. No torture. No siege on Hogwarts. Just one teenage Slytherin boy. Would you have considered giving him Blaise?"

Ginny hesitates. 

"Fuck. You." Pansy screams. "Fuck you, because Blaise never did anything, Blaise is quiet and clever and he never did a damn thing to any of you, he was never even associated with Death Eaters and just because he's a damned Slytherin you'd sell him out! So tell me what makes Harry Potter's life more important than an entire school's worth of children, but Blaise Zabini's isn't?"

Ginny growls. "Because Harry would have fought and died for a single one of those Hogwarts students, while Blaise Zabini did nothing against the Carrows, ran away when the fight started!"

"So it would have been better if he had been tortured too? Better if he had fought and died for people who spit on him and his House and would offer him up to die simply because he wears green and silver?"

"You brought it upon yourselves," Ginny scowls. "With your blood purism and your ambition-"

"Shut your goddamned ginger mouth," Pansy interrupts. "The entire school, teachers and students alike, treat innocent first-year Slytherins like demons without any basis. Is it any surprise we band together? When children face hatred from all sides, what choice do they have? And, don't tell me there's anything wrong with ambition. That there's anything wrong with wanting to be better than you are, because fuck that."

"You used Cruciatus on children," Ginny whispers, brown eyes flashing gold. 

"I'll have nightmares the rest of my life of their screams," Pansy replies. "Don't think I won't. But I also survived. And so did they. And life goes on."

-

(At home, Pansy thinks about a lot of things. About blood and bravery and heroism.)

(Ginny thinks about a lot of things too. One of them is Pansy's faint smile under the sharpness of her face when she looked at Luna.)

(Luna grins knowingly.)

-

Apparently, while Pansy had become - not friends... allies? companions? - with Luna and Ginny, Draco and Harry had been talking. They weren't friends either. Not exactly. But...

The world was changing. They were changing to fit it. 

(Though not a damn person expected Blaise giving Luna a dozen roses on Valentine's Day. Or Luna giving him... some sort of weird charm bracelet decorated with dried radishes. One time Zabini's perfectly tailored, ultra-fashionable sleeve fell back and Pansy saw a glimpse of a bracelet.)

-

Pansy has a painting of a unicorn in her room. Very few people have been in her room. 

-

In hindsight, having Harry and his friends and Draco and his friends under one roof at a party was a terrible idea. 

However, it made a very odd change to see Pansy and Hermione on the same side, even if it was only to yell at Draco and Harry. 

-

Pansy finds herself drinking tea with Hermione while they discuss (discuss! A polite word! What the fuck?!) the aristocratic nature of politics in Wizarding Law and how it can be changed. 

Pansy has burned that pretty pink dress. She's adapting to survive on her own, and if the others she left behind can't do that, too bad for them. Shs is determined to be on the winning side. If that means burning her prejudices with her dress, so be it. Pansy is a Slytherin and Slytherins are ambitious and cunning. 

Pansy will get what she wants. 

(And if the price of power and comfort is drinking with Luna Lovegood and debating with Ginny Weasely and navigating politics with Hermione Granger and even, on occasion, complaining about Draco with Harry fucking Potter, so be it.)

(Enjoying it, on occasion, happens to be a bonus.)

Pansy is truthful enough to herself that she knows there was selfishness and self-preservation when she called out about Harry in the Great Hall. But she refuses to feel sorry about trying to survive.

The desire to live is what keeps you alive, and Pansy wants to live. Slytherins get what they want. 

She is cold, and hard, and if she lost everything (if she lost Draco, and Blaise, and Luna, and her job and her home and her life and even her magic) she would adapt. 

(Sometimes she shows up at Draco's house at three am, chased there by night terrors formed by memories of tortured children, of walking in on her father curled in on himself staring with empty eyes at the wall because how did it get this far, of nights spent crying herself to sleep because this she's just a child and she thinks this might be the wrong side - and Draco sits her down and Astoria makes tea and Pansy hasn't cried in years but she shakes.)

(But she still smiles genuinely when she holds baby Scorpius in arms.)


End file.
